1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relates to an fiber optic connector, and more particularly, to an fiber optic connector having a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag and an optical fiber connection device having the fiber optic connector.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an optical fiber communication system, a fiber optic connector and an optical fiber adaptor are used to perform coupling, distributing or transferring among different optical fibers or pigtail fibers, and each of the fibers or pigtail fibers is coupled to the respective fiber optic connector.
In the prior art, during connecting optical fibers in an optical fiber distribution system, the optical fibers are identified depended on serial numbers on tags adhered to the optical fibers or serial numbers printed on the optical fibers. Also, ports of the fiber optic connector to be connected with the optical fibers are identified depended on serial numbers on tags adhered to the ports or serial numbers printed on the ports.
Accordingly, in practice, for finishing a connection operation of optical fibers, an operator has to perform the following steps of: firstly, looking up a table of the fiber optic connectors to be mounted; secondly, visually identifying serial numbers of optical fibers; and finally, looking for the ports of the fiber optic connector corresponding to the optical fibers based on the table and correctly inserting the optical fibers into the respective ports.
During each of the above steps, it needs the operator to carefully identifying the serial numbers of the optical fiber and/or the fiber optic connector, thereby easily causing visual fatigue of the operator. In a situation, the serial numbers may become blurred or damaged due to the severe application condition and may be illegible for the operator. Also, lighting in the operation field may disadvantageously affect the operator to identify and determine the serial numbers. Furthermore, it is difficult for the operator to find a misconnection of the optical fibers in the field, and the operator cannot find the misconnection in time. The above inconvenience will also be encountered in situations such as sequent maintenance of the fiber optic connectors and/or the optical fibers and changes of interconnections by the optical fiber. Therefore, it becomes more and more important to identify, connect, rearrange, inspect and repair an optical fiber network quickly and correctly.
With the RFID technique, a special identification system can be used to identify a particular object and read and write relevant data by radio signals without needing to establish a physical electric or optical contact between the identification system and the particular object. The object is identified by the radio signal in such a way that an electromagnetic field of a radio frequency transmitted by a reader and a RFID tag attached to the object interact with each other so that date are obtained from the RFID tag and are transmitted to an object device through a relevant link. As a result, a physical position of the object is automatically identified and tracked. The RFID tag contains information electronically stored therein, and can be identified at a distance of up to several meters. Unlike a bar code, the RFID tag may be provided on a surface of an object to be tracked and identified, or embedded in the object to be tracked and identified.
In a conventional optical fiber distribution network intelligent management system based on the RFID technique, a RFID tag having a unique identification code (ID) is mounted to each fiber optic connector. A RFID identifier and an electronic lock are further provided in an optical fiber distribution box to cooperate with background management software and a movable termination. When connection of any fiber optic connector needs to be changed, an instruction is sent by the background management software to the movable termination of the operator. The movable termination guides the operator to find a position of the fiber optic connector. The operator completes the operation under the guidance of the RFID identifier and LED lamps, and any misoperation can be found in time. With the technical solution, thousands of various optical fiber cables and pigtails distributed in the field or a distribution box can be found in time if required, and it can be ensured that all operations and changes of the optical fibers are correct.
FIG. 1 is a longitudinal section view of a conventional LC fiber optic connector. As shown in FIG. 1, the fiber optic connector 200 comprises a housing 201 made of plastic material, a tail sleeve 202 mounted in the housing 201 and configured to connect an external optical fiber cable (not shown), a holding tube 203 mounted in the housing 201 and configured to hold an optical fiber of the optical fiber cable, a fiber ferrule 204 extending from the housing 201, and a spring 205 disposed on the holding tube 203. A butt end of the fiber ferrule must be ground. The holding tube 203 may also be used for guiding injected fixation glue during assembling of the fiber optic connector. Generally, for example, an LC fiber optic connector has a narrow internal space so that the spring 205 and the tail sleeve 202 which are made of metal material extend almost throughout the fiber optic connector 200 in a longitudinal direction. When a RFID tag is mounted to the housing, read performance of the RFID tag will be reduced due to the spring 205 and the tail sleeve 202 if the RFID tag is located around the holding tube 203 made of metal. Furthermore, the radio frequency signal is very sensitive to metal. A passive RFID tag cannot normally operate on an object having a metal surface since this will cause an actual readable distance to be far shorter than an expected readable distance. As a result, the reading efficiency is reduced, misreading will probably occur, or even information in the RFID tag cannot be read at all.